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One step, One Punch, One Round at a Time

The mantra of a homeschooling fighter

I have a confession to make. I am a Rocky fan. Fan being short for fanatic of course. I love the story, the fights, the music. When I hear that Bump, Bump, Ba…my heart flutters. I love it all! The final installment came out in December 2015 and it was great, so great that Sly got nominated for an Oscar BTW. Anyway, in the movie, Rocky is training Apollo Creed’s son, Adonis Johnson, to be a great fighter. He repeats the line as they are training – “One step at a time. One punch at a time. One round at a time.”

As a homeschooling mother of seven, my days are full of punches. Most days feel like the twelfth round of a title fight. Kids not wanting to do school today, toddlers and preschoolers destroying the house, and lunch time, let’s not forget lunch time. Food it turns out is not just for eating. Have you ever tried to change two diapers and answer advanced geometry all while trying to nurse a hungry child? I bet your smiling too aren’t you? You never know what is going to happen in the day-in and day-out of mothering and homeschooling. It’s a jungle out there. But back to Rocky…

As a homeschooling mother of seven, my days are full of punches. Most days feel like the twelfth round of a title fight.theOppermom

Like any good prize fighter, I try to have a plan. Jab, jab, jab. But inevitably, like Mike Tyson famously said “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”, that first punch comes and the day takes a nosedive. Things don’t go as planned. I have learned many things as a mother and one of them is you’ve got to roll with the punches. God gives you the grace to complete the tasks that He wants done on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis. Therefore, you must also give yourself grace. We, as moms, are so critical of ourselves, at least I know I am. I feel like such a failure when I don’t meet my unrealistic expectations. When it’s in the final rounds I have to constantly remind myself the truth in James 4:6 “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

When I feel like the fight is slipping away and the adversary has been clobbering me incessantly, I must remind myself why I’m in the fight to begin with.theOppermom

When I feel like the fight is slipping away and the adversary has been clobbering me incessantly, I must remind myself why I’m in the fight to begin with. This isn’t a fight for country (Rocky IV), or love (Rocky I, II) or even to avenge my coach/mentor (Rocky III). The fight I am in is for my children (Rocky V), it is a fight to raise up my children in the way they should go, Proverbs 22:6. To deliver them to the doorstep of my Father’s house so I might hear, “Well done my good and faithful servant”, Matthew 25:21. I have my own Rocky mantra and it goes like this. “One lesson at a time. One subject at a time. One day at a time. But this fight isn’t just for gold that perishes, it is for the souls of young lives that will live forever.